Role Description We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer, Applied AI Services to build and scale end‑to‑end intelligent systems that power personalized experiences and HDP‑aligned capabilities. This is a hands‑on IC role where you’ll spend most of your time writing code and driving technical design for impactful production systems. You will operate at the intersection of: - Scalable backend services (APIs, events, data stores, cloud infrastructure) - Applied AI/ML systems (offline data ingestion, feature and signal pipelines, LLM/ML‑powered capabilities, evaluation frameworks, and AI‑driven workflows) You will help turn user intent into intelligence, safely bring new AI capabilities from 0→1, and scale them across Zillow’s shopper journey surfaces. Responsibilities - Lead end‑to‑end delivery of features — from early prototypes to production‑hardened systems. - Work deeply with AI/ML workflows while applying solid engineering and reliability practices. - Design, build, and maintain data pipelines (e.g., Spark, Databricks, Python, Kafka or equivalents) that turn raw events and signals into durable features and model inputs. - Develop and integrate ML/LLM capabilities (e.g., embeddings, similarity search, ranking, clustering, text generation) into backend flows and expose them via stable, well‑versioned services and APIs for product teams to consume. - Design and iterate on prompts, configurations, and AI workflows using notebooks and offline experimentation, and build automated evaluation systems (e.g., LLM‑as‑judge, regression suites, sampling pipelines) with clear quality metrics for accuracy, safety, latency, and cost. - Translate prototypes into reliable, observable production systems with solid tests, deployment pipelines, and on‑call readiness; own their operational health through runbooks, incident reviews, and continuous improvements, while optimizing for performance, reliability, and cost. - Collaborate closely with AI/ML and Agentic AI teams to bring 0→1 AI capabilities to customers and evolve them to 1→N, partner with SJS and HDP engineers on clean interfaces between offline pipelines, model outputs, and online APIs/events, and contribute reusable libraries, templates, and examples that help other engineers ship AI‑powered features faster. Qualifications - Strong proficiency in at least one backend programming language such as Python, Java, Kotlin, or similar. - Experience delivering scalable services or APIs to production in a cloud environment (e.g., AWS, GCP), including thoughtful data modeling and performance tuning. - Hands‑on experience with data processing or distributed systems (e.g., Spark, Databricks, Kafka or similar data pipelines). - Comfortable designing and consuming APIs (REST or GraphQL). - Experience with ML or LLM‑based systems and shipping at least one feature or capability to production. - Familiarity with embeddings, ranking, clustering, recommendations, or other ML applications that support personalization and search/browse experiences. - Experience with prompt engineering and LLM‑based product development, including safety/guardrail considerations and offline/online evaluation frameworks for AI‑powered features. - Comfortable in modern infrastructure environments (e.g., Kubernetes‑based deployments, event‑driven architectures, and observability stacks). - Track record of owning projects end‑to‑end — from requirements and design through implementation, rollout, operations, and cross‑functional collaboration with product, design, and data science partners. Benefits - Competitive base salary and benefits. - Eligible for equity awards based on factors such as experience, performance, and location. Company Description At Zillow, we’re reimagining how people move—through the real estate market and through their careers. As the most-visited real estate platform in the U.S., we help customers navigate buying, selling, financing, and renting with greater ease and confidence. - Zillow was named one of FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For® in 2025. - Included on the PEOPLE Companies That Care® 2025 list. Zillow Group is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment with the best employees.